Dr. Iris Elliott:

These are very good questions. Mr. Herrick will speak about the criminal conviction question as we included this in our submission. I want to speak about the policy tier. There is an opportunity for the successor to the roadmap for social inclusion. IHREC has just made a submission calling for an anti-poverty strategy and we will share this with the committee.

Something else to contextualise this is that we would like to challenge the narrative around equality and costs. This is a State which is very wealthy. When we were reviewed by the UN Committee on Economic , Social and Cultural Rights in Geneva last year, we got a very strong message that Ireland is a wealthy country which has resources and, therefore, it is a policy and political choice on how we expend our national wealth. Sometimes we speak about these issues as things that do not need to be immediately addressed but this is not at all accepted by the UN. I want to be very clear on that.

There is a body of evidence that is very much about the value of investing in equality and human rights. I draw attention to the anti-poverty strategy and the business and human rights national action plan, which is still long awaited. This also relates to some of the issues we have been speaking about, with regard to the role of business and the private sector in terms of equality and human rights. In our submission we speak about the need to support businesses where there are additional costs to realising equality. This would be support for small, medium and various types of businesses.

It is very much to try to have a narrative that is about investing in equality and investing in human rights as a wealthy country.